


twelve feet deep

by Verbyna



Series: rifle, scissor, stone [3]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Gore and Humor, Homophobia, M/M, MURDERBROS, Non-Linear Narrative, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Thanksgiving, Underage Drinking, fairy corpsemother shitty b. knight, nachos and Drake no-shame night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 19:44:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10623846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna
Summary: It’s Thanksgiving, two years after The Incident, and Justin is praying for Shitty to finally call so he’ll get out of this godawful dinner with the in-laws.“Stop calling it The Incident,” Holster whispers under his breath. They’re hiding out in the backyard, which is exactly how Justin figured this would go. “You got catfished and discovered your dream career in body disposal.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jedusaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedusaur/gifts).



> title and theme song by [the front bottoms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY1upeE5dZo), because this is also a college au about codependent boyfriends. beta & prompt by jedusaur, who peered into the 'verse characterization notes and asked for murderbros for my next trick.
> 
> i'm @soundslikepenance on tumblr btw

It’s Thanksgiving, two years after The Incident, and Justin is praying for Shitty to call so he’ll get out of this godawful dinner with the in-laws.

“Stop calling it The Incident,” Holster whispers under his breath. They’re hiding out in the backyard, which is exactly how Justin figured this would go. “You got catfished and discovered your dream career in body disposal.”

“Yes, but it was _incidental_ that I did the body-melt thing,” Justin whispers back furiously. “And I don’t see it being a career when their guy hasn’t called me even _once_ since then.”

Holster grimaces while shotgunning his stolen beer. He tosses the can in the scrubby grass by the stairs when he’s done, takes Justin by the shoulders, and says, very seriously, “Stop calling it body-melt. We talked about this. We made a list, bro.”

Justin grimaces right back. “I don’t think you’re allowed to call me ‘bro’ now we’re dating. That’s just weird.”

Holster snorts, but he’s smiling too, which is something Justin has missed a lot since they came out to Buffalo for the holidays. “That is so not the weird part. Bro, you’ll get the call. Someone might be getting murdered right now, think positive, yeah?”

“Positively,” Justin says, but his heart isn’t in it anymore. Holster’s dad is staring at them through the kitchen window, with a face like he’s about five seconds from cracking open the gun locker and using them for target practice. “How do you think,” he asks Holster, “your dad would dispose of us?”

“What?” Holster asks, before he follows Justin’s line of sight and frowns. His left hand slides up to the back of Justin’s neck very deliberately. “Tarp, shovel, public park.”

“Lame,” Justin says, leaning a little more into Holster. “Does he have the upper body strength to dig two holes? That’s, like, twelve feet.”

“He sure as fuck wouldn’t put our queer asses in the same hole. Shallow graves, babe.” He gives Justin a tiny, bracing shake. “We should go back in before we test it.”

Justin would rather test it than go back to that table, but number six on the STOP list is _stop trying to avoid the unavoidable._ He wrote it down himself.

 

+

 

After The Incident, Justin stops seeing his therapist. The body-melt thing he might’ve glossed over if he put his mind to it, but he’s a minor, and he has negative privacy if he confesses some sort of bisexual awakening that involves misusing school property and letting hot young killers into his dorm. So therapy is pretty much a no-go from the second he makes it back to his room undetected, and he’s not fucking happy about it.

 

There’s no OCD support group on campus. He doesn’t qualify for any of the addiction ones, since The Incident is singular, and he’s neither depressed, suicidal, nor ready to join the GSA. Which leaves him with the PTSD support group.

By the time he stops freaking out about getting caught and shows up for his first meeting, he’s figured out that he needs to shut the fuck up and listen. Saying he wants to do it again, that it felt good to be that good at something so wrong, isn’t something he should share with trauma class; all he wants is the familiar structure.

He’s not ashamed to say his old community college’s OCD support group saved his life. He is, however, pretty ashamed that he’s lying to his parents about staying in therapy, since they only asked for one thing when they agreed to pay his way through American college before he’s eighteen, and he used this month’s therapy money to get a fake ID.

Life kicks you in the teeth sometimes, and then you get drunk and lie about it. Or something.

 

+

 

Holster doesn’t show up until Justin’s third meeting. He sits down next to Justin because he’s the only guy in the room. It’s actually really nice to have some silent company.

“Silent my grade-A ass,” Holster says over lukewarm coffee and dry cookies. “Come over tomorrow night, it’s nachos and Drake no-shame night.”

“Drake?” Justin asks, mentally rearranging his schedule.

“Surround sound,” says Justin’s actual soulmate.

 

+

 

Support Group Conclusions, A List by Justin Oluransi:

One. It’s still PTSD if he wakes up in a cold sweat every other night. He didn’t used to expect every stranger to be a literal cold-blooded murderer out to frame him.

Two. His type in dudes is fit, blond, and functionally psychotic. See point One for why he shouldn’t act on it.

Three. Support doesn’t need to come from a group. It only takes one person. 

 

+

 

The best thing about Holster is that when he wakes up screaming, his hands go right for Justin’s throat. After they move off-campus when Justin turns eighteen, it gets pretty normal for Justin to wake up suffocating from something other than his brain trying to eat itself. It’s a relief to look up at Holster and be able to say, _I actually can’t breathe._ It’s about a thousand times better than having no reason for it except something that happened last school year and didn’t even leave a mark on him.

Holster, whose real first name Justin doesn’t find out until they sign the lease, makes a mean cocktail out of whatever dregs they have left over at the bottom of their bottles. He puts on music they both like, sits at the other end of their couch, and corrects Justin when he counts his bruises until the numbers match up. Once, twice, a dozen times.

When Justin says, “There’s no going back from what I did,” Holster says,

“I got a dishonorable discharge. And I keep my gun behind the TV. Sorry, bro.” And somehow that sounds like the only kind of moving forward that Justin can live with.

Bodies are just stuff, just meat and electricity, but when Holster slings an arm around Justin’s shoulders and says, “Five hours, the TA,” plotting out five ways to clean up pulls Justin right out of his intrusive thoughts spiral. Just a body, but it’s Holster’s body.

Holster is more than the sum of his parts.

 

+

 

“There was this dude,” Justin says. “After The Incident, but like, right after. He called me and said I did a fucking good job. He said their guys couldn’t find anything when they went over the chemistry lab.”

Holster waits. Out of the corner of his eye, Justin sees a gap opening around them in the dinner line. Holster got kind of intense, but still. Rude.

“He also said his name is Shitty.”

They watch each other for a couple of seconds, plastic trays in hand.

“I don’t care if he said his name is Christ the second, short for Christopher, but his friends call him Jesus,” says Holster, Justin’s soulmate for _real_. “He has your number. When he calls back, you’re taking me with you, bro.”

The whites of Holster’s eyes are showing. The froshes around them take another collective step back.

“Duh.”

 

+

 

Holster is 4am pizza and a shared clean clothes pile and shouting about the Bruins with crumbs flying out of both of their mouths.

Holster is blond hairs on Justin’s pillow when he comes back from the Samwell 24h Puzzle Hunt, still looking for clues in everything.

Holster is long stories about the desert and his Army buddies, and long pauses where Justin can talk his tangled head out. Midnight rescues from the library. Early morning jogs. His second pair of eyes when he breaks into the lab with a rack of ribs and a hypothesis.

Holster is eventually, inevitably, Justin’s boyfriend.

Justin is the first boy Holster brings home to his bigoted parents. There’s a separate list somewhere for what Justin is to him, according to Holster, but this is one item Justin knows is on there without breaking Holster’s trust.

 

+

 

The call comes in as Justin is stepping through the door of his crappy motel room. He thinks it’s Holster asking for an assist, so he doesn’t bother getting in before he digs out his phone.

It’s not Holster. It’s an unknown number. Justin is kinda surprised by how steady his fingers are when he connects and lets himself in, but then again, all the black ops manuals and memoirs he’s been mainlining since he was seventeen taught him to act normal in times of crisis. He even ran drills with Holster. He’s been _waiting._

“Are you with your roommate right now?” Shitty asks.

“Yes,” Justin says, and starts counting the basics while inventorying what he has on him.

“In Buffalo?”

“Yeah, bro. What do you need?”

Look how casual he is. Ice wouldn’t fucking melt. Also, he sized up Holster’s parents’ garage earlier, and he’s not super stressed about all the tarp and saws he didn’t pack in his trunk when he set out to meet the in-laws.

 

+

 

Holster meets him in his ex-neighbor’s foyer an hour later.

“We can’t get it out. Full houses, can’t bury shit in this cold, neighborhood patrol out for blood since the Connors got robbed.”

“Hey, bro,” says Justin, pausing to bump shoulders with him as he pulls his gloves on. He hands Holster his spares and a lint roller and tilts his head at the kitchen, where their 200lb job interview lies impaled on a chef’s knife. Last time he travels without a couple of legit coveralls. “We’re on our own for tonight, just gotta make it look less murder-y.”

“Forensics?”

Justin shrugs, then shakes his head. “Pro, didn’t expect the vic. I swept for hair and fiber, no idea what’s under the blood. Our guy wore gloves and toque, wasn’t scratched, so I’d skip it. Super weird entry angle though.”

“Get the laser pointers,” Holster says. “Accidental, yeah?”

“Fuck yeah. Check his fridge.”

They reconvene in the kitchen in a minute. It’s only eleven thirty, so there’s no huge issue with the lights, but it still makes Justin twitchy. He double-checks the batteries in his laser pointers and then eyes the tomatoes and lettuce on the counter.

“Sad. Get some protein in there.”

Holster looks up from where he’s gently pressing a slightly stiff hand around a bottle of Bud Lite. “You think this fucker ate balanced meals? At least he had more than one kinda produce.”

“Hmm,” says Justin, and squats beside the corpse to figure out the exact entry angle. He gets back up, picks up a pizza menu, and holds it at counter height in front of him. The sound of Holster’s chopping fades.

“Justin?”

“Hmm? Oh yeah.” He points at a spot on the counter a few inches to Holster’s left. Holster slides the chopping board over.

“He was in my dad’s unit,” Holster says suddenly. “Only guy who moved back home. Used to take me fishing.”

Justin squints at him. “My condolences?”

Holster rolls his eyes and explains, “He was military. He keeps all his knives sharp.” He lifts the one he just used. “And he had two of these. Same blade, no one else’s prints on them. We’ll take the spare with us when we go.”

It hadn’t occurred to Justin that they’d need the same knife for the salad and the stabbing. He experiences a brief moment of retroactive panic, since they couldn’t have lifted the corpse to get the first knife without destroying the scene, but then Holster smiles at him, all sunny. “Got your back. Don’t sweat it.”

“I know. Obviously. Think your dad’ll take it badly?”

“Fuck him,” Holster says, so offhand that it brings back the promise they made before Justin went to the motel. Fuck them.

They pop the top off the beer bottle with the novelty opener in the living room, set it next to the chopping board, detour to the living room again to switch the TV on to ESPN, and slip out through the back door into someone’s backyard. They kiss, just once, closed-mouthed, before they part ways to resume their routines.

Justin doesn’t sleep. For once, he’s okay with it.

 

+

 

Two months later, Shitty gets them well and truly high in Boston and gets the whole process out of them. He looks about as impressed as a cross-faded dude with epic ‘70s facial hair can look.

That’s the second interview. That’s how it really starts.

That’s the only beginning anyone knows about after they become themselves.


End file.
